ETF Flows, Jobs Miss, and Klarna IPO

Crypto’s down, and the U.S. has no jobs… it can only go up from here, right? Right??

This Week in Crypto

The crypto market fell 0.8% in the past 24 hours, extending a 6.5% weekly decline, with market cap sitting at $3.78T. 

• Bitcoin is trading around $113K, while Ethereum is marginally up over the last 24 hours but still down over 6.5% for the week.

Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded a net inflow of $440.8M during last week, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading with $247.9M. 

• And Ethereum continues to steal the show - BlackRock's ETHA fund attracted $314.9M in a single day on August 25, representing more than 70% of total Ethereum ETF demand. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gone full blockchain mode. 

• The U.S. Department of Commerce has started publishing GDP data on public blockchains for the first time ever, uploading Q2 2025 data to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and six other networks. 

• The data was disseminated through Chainlink and Pyth oracles, with help from Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken.

El Salvador made some moves as well:

• El Salvador moved its 6,274 Bitcoin (worth around $678M) from one public address into 14 new wallets - an attempt to reduce future risks from quantum computing.

• The country is trying to prepare for the day when quantum computers may crack Bitcoin’s cryptography, which Vitalik Buterin has warned could happen by 2040.

American Bitcoin, backed by Donald Trump’s sons, is set to hit Nasdaq in early September, through a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining. 

• Eric Trump, Donald Jr., and Canadian minder Hut 8 will hold a 98% stake. 

This Week in TradFi

All the news this week was about the U.S. jobs report, which came in weaker than expected.

• U.S. job growth slowed more than expected in August, and the unemployment rate increased - pointing to signs of a slowing labor market, and boosting expectations that the Fed will cut rates.

  • Nonfarm payrolls increased by 22,000 jobs in August, far lower than the Reuters forecast of 75,000.

  • Unemployment rose to 4.3% in August, up from 4.2% the previous month.

  • There are now more unemployed Americans than open jobs for the first time since 2021. 

• Interestingly, U.S. markets had a positive week, with stocks rising in anticipation of further rate cuts.

  • The S&P 500 posted a closing record high on Thursday - fueled partially by Broadcom, Amazon, and Meta stocks.

  • Investors place the probability of a 25bps rate cut at 95%, according to CME’s FedWatch Tool.

This Week in Tech

OpenAI is developing an AI-powered hiring platform to compete with LinkedIn.

• The product is called the OpenAI Jobs Platform, expected to launch by mid-2026. 

• OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo announced the new product in a blog post, saying the platform will “use AI to help find the perfect matches between what companies need and what workers can offer.”

• Sam Altman has said that Simo will oversee many applications, potentially including a browser and social media app, in addition to the jobs platform.

More lawsuit drama for you - Scale AI, which helps tech companies prepare data to train their AI models, is filing a lawsuit against one of its former sales employees and its competitor Mercor.

• The lawsuit alleges that the employee, who was hired by Mercor, “stole more than 100 confidential documents concerning Scale’s customer strategies and other proprietary information.” 

• Scale AI is suing Mercor for misappropriation of trade secrets and is suing their former employee for breach of contract. 

Buy now, pay later startup Klarna is reviving its IPO, hoping to raise as much as $1.27B in a listing that values the company at up to $14B. 

• The company and some of its shareholders are selling a little over 34 million shares between $35 and $37. 

• Klarna would receive funds from about 5.6 million shares, while shareholders are selling almost 29 million shares. 

As usual, below are some lots of fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Atlassian is buying The Browser Company for $610M in cash.

• CoreWeave, which provides cloud servers to large companies training AI models, is acquiring OpenPipe, a two-year-old YC startup.

• India-based e-commerce startup FirstClub has raised a $23M Series A at a valuation of $120M. 

• Quantum computing startup IQM has raised more than $300M in a Series B round, led by Ten Eleven Ventures, making IQM a unicorn.

• Anthropic has raised a $13B Series F round, bringing its valuation up to $183B. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.